General

Writing, teaching and publishing all become worthwhile when they enable other creative minds. I met Ari Lacenski at the most recent ITP show and she told me about her new Anti-social Lights, fashioned in part by hacking my example code. She writes, “I thought about heaping small lights in a pile and tuning them to […]

This month’s Make Magazine has a new review of my book, generously calling it the “perfect guide”. The review continues, “Robert Faludi demystifies the confusing realm of ZigBee wireless mesh networking and walks you through basic examples that serve as great starting points for many fun wireless projects. …Building your own wireless sensor network will

My new Fall 2011 class at NYU’s ITP has just been announced. Students taking Sensitive Buildings will have the unique opportunity to invent large-scale sensor and device networks, and test out their prototypes in a 28-story New York City apartment building. Naturally we’ll be using Building Wireless Sensor Networks as one primary source, and I’m

Botanicalls is listed first in Wired Magazine’s compilation of “21 Awesome DIY Projects” this month! This has me inspired to work up some nifty and needed software upgrades for the kits.

Botanicalls is back with a brand new leaf kit from SparkFun Electronics! Solder it together and you’ll have your plant tweeting in no time. This new kit comes pre-programmed to connect to a Botanicalls Twitter test site so your favorite flora can feel the joy right away. Botanicalls uses Arduino to help your houseplant let you know

At last! The Building Wireless Sensor networks Basics Kit is now available from Sparkfun Electronics. It includes many of the components you will need to build the examples and projects in the book. Parts include: 1x – AA battery holder, 2x – 10uf 25v capacitor, 2x – 1.0uf 50v capacitor, 1x – mini-USB cable (6ft),

Hostile Doorbell Towel Spy Christmas Intruder Alert Dog Bowl Monitor Traffic Light Doorbell Bathroom Duck Yury Gitman‘s Making Toys class for the Parsons MFA in Design and Technology program has been using my book to create “physical interfaces for play.” The students have put some serious creative spin on the example projects! My Doorbell Example, among

Matt Richardson of Make Magazine has created a networked on-air light using the XBee Internet Gateway. The Gateway (running on a ConnectPort) grants Make: Live high-tech flexibility in placement of its old-school warning. Matt writes that the XIG and its open-source code, “allowed us to hang the light wherever we wanted without the need to run

All the breadboard layouts and circuit diagrams in “Building Wireless Sensor Networks” were created with Fritzing, a terrific initiative that’s creating an open-source electronics layout tool. Fritzing is designed to make it easy for prototypers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to work creatively with interactive electronics and there’s lots of news about it this month: The

Benjamin Zaitlen just alerted me to the charming new BeeSim project he helped create at Indiana University. A paper about it was presented at the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. BeeSim uses the LilyPad XBee that I co-designed, to teach children the basics of honeybee behavior as an interactive and physical game. Want